Cleveland, Grover (American, 1837-.) Communism of Capital-Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government. But the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which assiduously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of misrule. -(1888.)

Condition, Not Theory-It is a condition which confronts us-not a theory.-(Annual message. 1887.)

Innocuous Desuetude- After an existence of nearly twenty years of almost innocuous desuetude, these laws are brought forth.- (Message. March, 1886.)

Clinton, De Witt (American, 1769-1828.)

Law vs. War-What right have the rulers of nations to unsheathe the sword of destruction, and to let loose the demon of desolation upon mankind whenever caprice or pride, ambition or avarice, shall prescribe? And are there no fixed laws, founded in the nature of things, which ordain bounds to the fell spirit of revenge, the mad fury of domination, and the insatiable thirst of cupidity?

Cobb, Howell (American, 1815-1868.)

The Citizen-Soldier-I trust you will never desire to induce this government to create a large standing army in time of peace as preparatory to some future emergency which may require it. The bulwark of the defense of our country lies in the hearts and the spirit of the American people. It is to the citizen-soldier, and not the mercenary hireling, that the American people look for the defense of their rights in an emergency.

Cobden, Richard (England, 1804-1865.)

Small States and Civilization-It may seem Utopian; but I don't feel sympathy for a great nation, or for those who desire the greatness of a people by the vast extension of empire. What I like to see is the growth, development, and elevation of the individual man. But we have had great empires at all times,— Syria, Persia, and the rest. What trace have they left of the individual man? Nebuchadnezzar, and the countless millions under his sway, there is no more trace of them than of herds of buffaloes, or flocks of sheep. But look at your little states; look at Greece, with its small territories, some not larger than an English county! Italy, over some of whose states a man on horseback could ride in a day,-they have left traces of individual man, where civilization has flourished, and humanity has been elevated. It may appear Utopian, but we can never expect the individual elevated until a practical and better code of moral law prevails among nations, and until the small states obtain justice at the hands of the great.-(1862.)

Armament Not Necessary-I sometimes quote the United States of America; and I think in this matter of national defense, they set us a very good example. Does anybody dare to attack that nation? There is not a more formidable power, in every sense of the word,— although you may talk of France and Russia,than the United States of America; and there is not a statesman with a head on his shoulders who does not know it, and yet the policy of the United States has been to keep a very small amount of armed force in existence. At the present moment, they have not a line-of-battle ship afloat, notwithstanding the vast extension of their commercial marine.-(From a speech delivered in 1850.)

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (England, 17721834.)

Hissing Prejudices-I am not at all surprised that when the red-hot prejudices of aristocrats are suddenly plunged into the cool element of reason they should go off with a hiss. (From a speech at Bristol.)

Conkling, Roscoe (American, 1829-1888.)

The Candidate from Appomattox - When asked whence comes our candidate, we say from Appomattox. Obeying instructions I should never dare to disregard; expressing, also, my own firm conviction, I rise in behalf of the State of New York to propose a nomination with which the country and the Republican party can grandly win. The election before us will be the Austerlitz of American politics. It will decide whether for years to come the country will be "Republican or Cossack." The need of the hour is a candidate who can carry the doubtful States, North and South; and believing that he more surely than any other can carry New York against any opponent, and carry not only the North, but several States of the South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. He alone of living Republicans has carried New York as a presi dential candidate. Once he carried it even according to a Democratic count, and twice he carried it by the people's vote, and he is stronger now. The Republican party with its standard in his hand is stronger now than in 1868 or 1872. Never defeated in war or in peace, his name is the most illustrious borne by any living man; his services attest his greatness, and the country knows them by heart. His fame was born not alone of things written and said, but of the arduous greatness of things done, and dangers and emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in vain in the past, for any other on whom the nation leans with such confidence and trust.- (Nominating Grant. 1880.)

Constant, Benjamin (France, 1767-1830.)

Censorship of the Press-Censors are to thought what spies are to innocence; they both find their gains in guilt, and where it does not exist they create it. Censors class themselves "literary." Producing nothing themselves,

as

they are always in the humor of their sterility. No writer who respects himself would consent to be a censor.- (1820.)

Cook, Joseph (American, 1838–.)

The Continental Republic-The Roman eagles, when their wings were strongest, never flew so far as from Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate. The longest straight line that can be drawn inside the limits of the old Roman Empire will not reach from Boston to San Francisco.

Neither Cæsar's empire nor Alexander's had the vast and multiplex physical opportunity possessed by America. Gibraltar and London, Thebes and the frosty Caucasus were the four corners of imperial Rome, and Alexander ruled from the Adriatic to the Indus; but stretch your compasses on the globe from London to the Egyptian Thebes, or from Gibraltar to the Caucasian summits, or from the Macedonian Adriatic to the Indus at the foot of the Himalayas, and you have not opened them as far as you must separate them to span the green fields and steepled cities between the surf of the Bay of Fundy and the waterfalls of the Yosemite, or to touch, on the one side, the Florida Keys, and on the other, the continuous woods,

"Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings."
-(1884.)

Corwin, Thomas (American, 1794-1865.)
"Shoot Them Down, and Then Exhort
Them to Be Free" I ask, Mr. President,
what has Mexico got from you for parting with
two-thirds of her domain? She has given you
ample redress for every injury of which you
have complained. She has submitted to the
award of your commissioners, and up to the time
of the rupture with Texas, faithfully paid it.
And for all that she has lost (not through or by
you, but which loss has been your gain) what re-
quital do we, her strong, rich, robust neighbor
make?

Do we send our missionaries there, "to point the way to heaven? Or do we send the schoolmasters to pour daylight into her dark places, to aid her infant strength to conquer freedom, and reap the fruit of the independence herself alone had won?

No, no; none of this do we. But we send regiments, storm towns, and our colonels prate of liberty in the midst of the solitudes their ravages have made. They proclaim the empty forms of social compact to a people. bleeding and maimed with wounds received in defending their hearthstones against the invasion of these very men, who shoot them down and then exhort them to be free.

Your chaplain of the navy throws aside the New Testament and seizes a bill of rights. He takes military possession of some town in California, and instead of teaching the plan of the atonement and the way of salvation to the poor ignorant Celt, he presents Colt's pistol to his ear and calls on him to take "trial by jury and habeas corbus," or nine bullets in his head.

Oh! Mr. President, are you not the lights of the earth, if not its salt?

What is the territory, Mr. President, which you propose to wrest from Mexico? It is consecrated to the heart of the Mexican by many a well-fought battle with his old Castilian master. His Bunker Hills, and Saratogas, and Yorktowns are there!

The Mexican can say, "There I bled for liberty! and shall I surrender that consecrated home of my affections to the Anglo-Saxon invaders? What do they want with it? They have Texas already. They have possessed themselves of the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. What else do they want? To what shall I point my children as memorials of that independence which I bequeath to them when those battlefields shall have passed from my possession ?»

Sir, had one come and demanded Bunker Hill of the people of Massachusetts, - had England's lion ever showed himself there, is there a man over thirteen and under ninety who would not have been ready to meet him? Is there a river on this continent that would not have run red with blood? Is there a field but would have been piled high with the unburied bones of slaughtered Americans before these consecrated battlefields of liberty should have been wrested from us?— (February 11th, 1847.)

With Bloody Hands to Hospitable Graves - With the 20,000,000 of people you have about 1,000,000,000 acres of land inviting settlement by every conceivable argument, bringing them down to a quarter of a dollar an acre and allowing every man to squat where he pleases. But the senator from Michigan says we shall be 200,000,000 in a few years, and "we want room." If I were a Mexican, I would tell you: "Have you not room enough in your own country to bury your dead? If you come into mine, we will greet you with bloody hands and welcome you to hospitable graves.”—(Congress, February 11th, 1847.)

God's Judgments on Nations-Mr. President, a mind more prone to look for the judgments of heaven in the doings of men than mine, cannot fail to see the Providence of God. When Moscow burned, it seemed as if the earth was lighted up that the nations might behold the scene. As that mighty sea of fire gathered and heaved, and rolled upwards, higher and yet higher, till its flames aspired the stars and lit the whole heavens, it did seem as though the God of nations was writing, in characters of flame on the front of his throne, the doom that shall fall upon the strong nation, which tramples in scorn upon the weak. And what fortune awaits him, the appointed executor of this work, when it was all done? He, too, conceived the notion that his "destiny" pointed onward to universal dominion. France was too small-Europe, he thought, should bow down before him. But as soon as this idea took possession of his soul, he, too, became powerless. His terminus must recede, too. Right there, while he witnessed the

humiliation, and, doubtless, meditated the subjugation of Russia, he who holds the winds in his fist, gathered the snows of the North and blew them upon his six hundred thousand men. They fled they froze-they perished! and now the mighty Napoleon, who had resolved on universal dominion,- he, too, is summoned to answer for the violation of that ancient law, "Thou shalt not covet anything which is thy neighbor's." How is the mighty fallen! He, beneath whose proud footstep Europe trembled, - he is now an exile at Elba, and now finally a prisoner on the rock of St. Helena. And there, on a barren island, in an unfrequented sea in the crater of an extinguished volcano,- there is the deathbed of the mighty conqueror! All his annexations have come to that! His last hour is now come, and he, "the Man of Destiny"; he who had rocked the world as with the throes of an earthquake, is now powerless and still. Even as the beggar dies, so he died. On the wings of a tempest that raged with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only power that controlled him while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful warrior, another witness to the existence of that eternal decree that they who do not rule in righteousness shall perish from the earth. He has found "room" at last. And France,-she, too, has found "room." Her "eagles" now no longer scream upon the banks of the Danube, the Po, and the Borysthenes. They have returned home to their old eyrie between the Alps, the Rhine, and the Pyrenees; so shall it be with your banners of conquest. You may carry them to the loftiest peaks of the Cordilleras; they may wave with insolent triumph in the Halls of the Montezumas; the armed men of Mexico may quail before them; but the weakest hand in Mexico, uplifted in prayer to the God of justice, may call down against you a Power, in the presence of which the iron hearts of your warriors shall be turned into ashes.-(February 11th, 1847.) Cousin, Victor (France, 1792-1867.)

Truth and Liberty-I owe to you truth as I owe it to myself; for truth is the law of your reason as of mine. Without doubt there ought to be measure in the communication of truth,all are not capable of it at the same moment and in the same degree. It is necessary to portion it out to them in order that they may be able to receive it; but, in fine, the truth is the proper good of the intelligence; and it is for me a strict duty to respect the development of your mind, not to arrest,- and even to favor its progress towards truth.

I ought also to respect your liberty. I have not even always the right to hinder you from committing a fault. Liberty is so sacred that, even when it goes astray, it still deserves, up to a certain point, to be managed. We are often wrong in wishing to prevent too much the evil that God himself permits. Souls may be corrupted by an attempt to purify them.

Cox, Samuel S. (American, 1824-1889.)

True Religion and Politics-The moun

tains of our Scriptures are full of inspiration for our guidance. Their teachings may well be car. ried into our political ethics. But it was not from Ararat, which lifted its head first above the flood and received the dove with its olive branch; not from Sinai, which looks proudly upon three nations and almost three countries, and overlooks our kind with its great moral code; not from Horeb, where Jehovah with his fearful hand covered his face that man might not look upon his brightness; not from Tabor, where the great transformation was enacted; not from Pisgah, where Moses made his farewell to the people he had delivered and led so long; not from Carmel, where the prayer of Elijah was answered in fire; not from Lebanon, whose cedars were the beauty of the earth; not from the Mount of Olives, which saw the agony of the Savior; not from Calvary, at whose great tragedy nature shuddered and the heavens were covered with gloom; not from one or all of these secular or sacred mountains that our best teaching for duty comes. It comes from that nameless mountain, set apart, because from it emanated the great and benignant truths of him who spake as never man spake. Here is the sublime teaching:

"Ye have heard in the aforetime, that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.

"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.

"That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."

The spirit of this teaching has no hospitality for test oaths, and asks no compensation for grace. Along with this teaching and to the same good end, are the teachings of history, patriotism, chivalry, and even economic selfishness. Yet these teachers are often blind guides to duty. They are but mole-hills compared with the lofty mountain whose spiritual grandeur brings peace, order, and civilization!

When these principles obtain in our hearts, then our legislation will conform to them. When they do obtain their hold in these halls, there will rise a brilliant day-star for America. —(1879.)

Crapo, William Wallace

teenth century.)

(American, nine

Public Office a Public Trust - Public offices are a public trust, to be held and administered with the same exact justice and the same conscientious regard for the responsibilities involved as are required in the execution of private trusts. (From an opening address to the Massachusetts Republican State Convention. 1881.)

Crittenden, John Jordan (American, 17871863.)

Clay as a Representative Man-Henry Clay is the fair representative of the age in

which he lived; an age which forms the greatest and brightest era in the history of man ; an age teeming with new discoveries and developments, extending in all directions the limits of human knowledge, exploring the agencies and elements of the physical world, and turning and subjugating them to the uses of man,unfolding and establishing, practically, the great principles of popular rights and free government; and which, nothing doubting, nothing fearing, still advances in majesty, aspiring to and demanding further improvement and further amelioration of the condition of mankind. - (1852.)

Crockett, David (American, 1786-1836.)

A Raccoon in a Bag - Their policy reminds me of a certain man in the State of Ohio, who, having caught a raccoon, placed it in a bag, and as he was on his way home he met a neighbor who was anxious to know what he had in his bag. He was told to put his hand in and feel, and in doing so he was bit through the fingers; he then asked what it was and was told that it was "only a bite." I fear that our good Eastern friends have a hook and a bite for us. -(1830.)

"Be Sure You're Right" right-then go ahead."

"Be sure you're

Culpeper, Sir John (England, -1660.)

"Monopolies and Polers of the People »—I have but one grievance more to offer you; but this one compriseth many; it is a nest of wasps, or swarm of vermin, which have overcrept the land. I mean the monopolies and polers of the people; these, like the frogs of Egypt, have gotten possession of our dwellings, and we have a room scarce free from them; they sup in our cup, they dip in our dish, they sit by our fire, we find them in the dye-vat, washbowl, and powdering tub. They share with the butler in his box; they have marked and sealed us from head to foot. Mr. Speaker, they will not bate us a pin; we may not buy our own clothes without their brokage; these are the leeches that have sucked the commonwealth so hard that it is almost become hectical; and, Mr. Speaker, some of these are ashamed of their right names; they have a vizard to hide the brand made by that good law in the last Parliament of King James; they shelter themselves under the name of a Corporation; they make by-laws which serve their turns to squeeze us and fill their purses. Unface these and they will prove as bad cards as any in the pack; these are not petty chapmen, but wholesale men. Mr. Speaker, I have echoed to you the cries of the kingdom; I will tell you their hopes: they look to heaven for a blessing upon this Parliament; they hang upon his Majesty's exemplary piety and great justice, which renders his ears open to the just complaints of his subjects; we have had lately a gracious assurance of it; it is the wise conduct of this, whereby the other great affairs of the kingdom and this our grievance of no less importance may go hand in hand in

preparation and resolution; then, by the blessing of God, we shall return home with an olive branch in our mouths, and a full confirmation of the privileges which we received from our ancestors and owe to our posterity, and which every free-born Englishman hath received with the air he breathed in.-(1640.)

Curran, John Philpot (Ireland, 1750-1817.)

Pensions and Patriotism-This polyglot of wealth, this museum of curiosities-the Pension List-embraces every link in the human chain, every description of men, women, and children, from the exalted excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney, to the debased situation of the lady who humbleth herself that she may be exalted. But the lessons it inculcates form its greatest perfection: It teacheth, that sloth and vice may eat that bread which virtue and honesty may starve for after they have earned it. It teaches the idle and dissolute to look up for that support which they are too proud to stoop and earn. It directs the minds of men to an entire reliance on the ruling power of the state, who feeds the ravens of the royal aviary, that cry continually for food. It teaches them to imitate those saints on the Pension List, that are like the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet are arrayed like Solomon in his glory. In fine, it teaches a lesson, which, indeed, they might have learned from Epictetus, that it is sometimes good not to be over-virtuous; it shows that, in proportion as our distresses increase, the munificence of the crown increases also; in proportion as our clothes are rent, the royal mantle is extended

over us.

Notwithstanding that the Pension List, like charity, covers a multitude of sins, give me leave to consider it as coming home to the members of this House; -give me leave to say, that the crown, in extending its charity, its liberality, its profusion, is laying a foundation for the independence of Parliament; for, hereafter, instead of orators or patriots accounting for their conduct to such mean and unworthy persons as freeholders, they will learn to despise them, and look to the first man in the state; and they will, by so doing, have this security for their independence,- that while any man in the kingdom has a shilling, they will not want one! - (1786.)

Reply to Threats - I do not know how it may be my destiny to fall;- it may be by chance, or malady, or violence; but, should it be my fate to perish the victim of a bold and honest discharge of my duty, I will not shun it. I will do that duty; and, if it should expose me to sink under the blow of the assassin, and become a victim to the public cause, the most sensible of my regrets would be, that on such an altar there should not be immolated a more illustrious sacrifice. As to myself, while I live, I shall despise the peril. I feel in my own spirit the safety of my honor, and in my own and the spirit of the people do I feel strength enough to hold that administration, which can

Curran, John Philpot - Continued give a sanction to menaces like these, responsible for their consequences to the nation and the individual. (1790.)

The Irresistible March of Progress - Another gentleman has said, the Catholics have got much, and ought to be content. Why have they got that much? Is it from the minister? Is it from the Parliament, which threw their petition over its bar? No,-they got it by the great revolution of human affairs; by the astonishing march of the human mind; a march that has collected too much momentum, in its advance, to be now stopped in its progress. The bark is still afloat; it is freighted with the hopes and liberties of millions of men; she is already under way; the rower may faint, or the wind may sleep, but, rely upon it, she has already acquired an energy of advancement that will support her course, and bring her to her destination; rely upon it, whether much or little remains, it is now vain to withhold it; rely upon it, you may as well stamp your foot upon the earth in order to prevent its revolution. You cannot stop it! You will only remain a silly gnomon upon its surface, to measure the rapidity of rotation, until you are forced round and buried in the shade of that body whose irresistible course you would endeavor to oppose! - (1796.)

"Such Is the Oscitancy of Man"-Such is the oscitancy of man that he lies torpid for ages under these aggressions, until, at last, some signal abuse-the violation of Lucrece, the death of Virginia, the oppression of William Tell-shakes him from his slumber. For years had those drunken gambols of power been played in England; for years had the waters of bitterness been rising to the brim; at last, a single drop caused them to overflow,-the oppression of a single individual raised the people of England from their sleep. And what does that great statute do? It defines and asserts the right, it points out the abuse, and it endeavors to secure the right, and to guard against the abuse, by giving redress to the sufferer, and by punishing the offender. For years had it been the practice to transport abnoxious persons out of the realm into distant parts, under the pretext of punishment, or of safe custody. Well might they have been said to be sent "to that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns"; for of these wretched travelers how few ever did return!

But of that flagrant abuse this statute has laid the ax to the root. It prohibits the abuse; it declares such detention or removal illegal; it gives an action against all persons concerned in the offense by contriving, writing, signing, countersigning such warrant, or advising or assisting therein. Are bulwarks like these ever constructed to repel the incursions of a contemptible enemy? Was it a trivial and ordinary occasion which raised this storm of indignation in the Parliament of that day? Is the ocean ever lashed by

the tempest to waft a feather, or to drown a fly? By this act you have a solemn legislative declaration, "that it is incompatible with liberty to send any subject out of the realm, under pretense of any crime supposed or alleged to be committed in a foreign jurisdiction, except that crime be capital." Such were the bulwarks which our ancestors placed about the sacred temple of liberty, such the ramparts by which they sought to bar out the ever-toiling ocean of arbitrary power; and thought (generous credulity!) that they had barred it out from their posterity forever. Little did they foresee the future race of vermin that would work their way through those mounds, and let back the inundation! (In the case of Johnson.)

Appeal to Lord Avonmore-I am not ig norant, my lords, that the extraordinary construction of law against which I contend has received the sanction of another court, nor of the surprise and dismay with which it smote upon the general heart of the bar. I am aware that I may have the mortification of being told, in another country, of that unhappy decision; and I foresee in what confusion I shall hang down my head when I am told it.

But I cherish, too, the consolatory hope that I shall be able to tell them that I had an old and learned friend whom I would put above all the sweepings of their hall, who was of a different opinion; who had derived his ideas of civil liberty from the purest fountains of Athens and of Rome; who had fed the youthful vigor of his studious mind with the theoretic knowledge of their wisest philosophers and statesmen; and who had refined that theory into the quick and exquisite sensibility of moral instinct by contemplating the practice of their most illustrious examples, by dwelling on the sweet-souled piety of Cimon, on the anticipated Christianity of Socrates, on the gallant and pathetic patriotism of Epaminondas, on that pure austerity of Fabricius, whom to move from his integrity would have been more difficult than to have pushed the sun from his course.

I would add, that, if he had seemed to hesitate, it was but for a moment; that his hesitation was like the passing cloud that floats across the morning sun, and hides it from the view, and does so for a moment hide it, by involving the spectator, without even approaching the face of the luminary. And this soothing hope I draw from the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life; from the remembrance of those Attic nights and those refections of the gods which we have partaken with those admired, and respected, and beloved companions, who have gone before us,-over whose ashes the most precious tears of Ireland have been shed.*

* Here, according to the original report, Lord Avonmore could not refrain from bursting into tears. In the midst of Curran's legal argument, "this most beautiful episode," says Charles Phillips, "bloomed like a green spot amid the desert. Mr. Curran told me himself that when the court rose the tipstaff informed him he was wanted im